FOI for governor minutes

[nomeentiende]

The school where I'm a governor has received an FOI request from a parent for all Full Governing Body and committee meeting minutes for the last 5 years. My initial thought is that the amount of time it would take for someone to go through all the minutes and redact anything confidential would push the request over the £450 limit, and this would therefore be reasonable grounds for refusal. Does that seem reasonable? There must be plenty of other schools have had similar requests in the past, so perhaps a precedent has been set one way or another - any pointers would be helpful.

There is actually no legal requirement to put them on the school website but they must be made available on request.

minutes are required to be published on the schools website and it's something Ofsted will look at before visiting so get them up asap

Is that a new requirement? It definitely wasn't the case when I was a governor and I know my dcs current schools (not where I was a governor) don't publish them on their websites

12 meetings a year for five years, two pages of minutes (IME) for each meeting

when I was a governor the full meeting minutes were at least 10 pages long and sub committees maybe halve that, how would you get everything on 2 pages?

x posts with clueless claudia, I did wonder if all the schools I've been involved with were breaking the rules by not publishing minutes

Schools are not obliged to publish Govs minutes on their website but they should be freely available to anyone who requests them.

Meetings certainly should be minuted in a way that anonymises individuals where relevant though.

Thanks all. Useful to know.

Ofsted told us they look at a school website and best practice is to have minutes on there.

Many schools put up FGB minutes on the web site but not necessarily all committee minutes. It is not a legal requirement to put them on the web site. We have an Ofsted dossier of all minutes and supporting provers to show we have challenged the Head and are doing our job.

. All confidential items go into Part 2. These are confidential normally because a child or parent could be identified or there is something about a member of staff that was confidential. A skilled clerk writes minutes knowing they are available so shouldn’t be including anything confidential in the main minutes. It’s therefore not a massive job to make them available.

Supporting papers

Just another question, building on some of the answers already given. If the part 2 (confidential) minutes are provided in response to a FOI, is it reasonable to expect that they would go to the requestor directly, but not be posted online? Or can he do whatever he wants with them once he has them?

I think as a school you need to take further legal advice if this is the Liley thought process of the applicant.

You may have reasons not to disclose Part 2 redacted or not. As they pertain to possibly an individual and not the whole function of the school or safeguarding matter which potentially shouldn't have been discussed at Full Governors meeting.

As said previously in my 5 years as a Governor very rarely had Part 2

I agree with the above to get some legal advice. We very rarely have part 2 and are aware that they dont remain confidential forever -in that the reason for the confidentiality might have passed (eg redundancies are now public knowledge) and the board really doesnt discuss indivudual pupils etc in an identifying way as thats not the purpose of the board. Hope you sort it.

is it reasonable to expect that they would go to the requestor directly, but not be posted online? Or can he do whatever he wants with them once he has them?

Information disclosed through FOI can be shared however the person requests it wishes.
Any personal or commercially sensitive information should be redacted.

Your concern suggests that your clerk is inexperienced in effective minute taking.

The OP says she's a new governor, unless I'm misunderstanding she's asking for infomration to understand the process which is a fair thing to do, is there a suggestion that the clerk isn't doing her/his job properly?

When I was a governor I'd have asked the same thing about the confidential minutes as it wasn't a rare event to have them although I agree that the confidential aspect of most disappeared when the item being discussed eventually happened.

The OP says she's a new governor, unless I'm misunderstanding she's asking for infomration to understand the process which is a fair thing to do

As a new Governor, the OP should have access to professional guidance and support, ideally a mentor, and should be able to approach her Chair/Clerk regarding the processes and procedures.

Assuming that this is the case, the questions the OP has asked on a public forum having accessed that info, suggests that she has concerns about the way in which the GB, and the Clerk, are doing their job.

Or that she doesn't have a clue (no offence intended) about the way these things are conducted, minutes, what should be in them, or not, FOI, and the process.

When I was a new school governor I would have gone to the Chair or another governor I knew reasonably well. I also had access to an online resource.

If you haven't got any experience of the public sector FOI and the requirement for information to be transparent and available can take some getting used to.

If seems to me some prople are reading far too much into my questions and trying to fit a conspiracy to the very minimal amount of info I've given. For the record, there's no suggestion anyone hasn't done their job properly. Like other people I ask questions on mnet because it's usually very knowledgeable and helpful, especially when I'm feeling like my questions might be naive, and especially at weekends when other sources of advice are having some well deserved time off.

Thankyou to everyone who has given me good advice without leaping to judgement.

All Governor minutes should be written in a way that they can be made available to the general public. Anything confidential should go in a confidential note. It’s best practice to but governor minutes on the website but not a legal requirement. The parent is entitled to the last five years minutes and there should be nothing in them that needs redacting. They can FOI confidential notes (and any other internal correspondence) but that can be redacted if it would breach someone’s confidentially. They can make a data protection request for anything they (or their children) are named in and that can’t be redacted no matter how embarrassing it is.

Your clerk should be dealing with this and should know all this.

Nom you are going to have to learn to respond to simple challenged far better than you responded to titchy if you're to succeed in this role.

He/she was pointing out simple facts - like it or not!

Teaches and governors names are public information.
Governors minutes are public information.
If a governing body isn't happy with having public information public the people will wonder what they're hiding!

And usually when someone claims vexatious complaint what they actually mean is "happy to write truths we want hidden. Going about it in a way we don't like because we've shut doors in their face".

My son attended such a school.

The names and details of individuals not otherwise in the public domain can be redacted. Better to not minute such identifying details in the first place. How many meetings take place a year.

For the record, there's no suggestion anyone hasn't done their job properly.

So why was your first question 'how can we refuse to provide the information'? That suggests the clerk/chair have already suggested this is what they're going to do.

If I was a new governor and we had an FOI I'd be offering to help photocopy the minutes, not asking how to avoid compliance. And if the clerk/chair had suggested not releasing the info I'd be asking very serious questions of them, not colluding with them.

So yes, I'm afraid that does imply someone hasn't done their job properly.

For the record FoIs are the bain of my life. But I absolutely wholeheartedly agree that publicly funded organisations have a responsibility to openness and transparency.

I'm also MNing to avoid the ironing

New-year - maybe the OP does have access to all resources you suggest, she might not, ime not all governing bodies are as good as they should be with new joiners and some people like to do their own research. There's nothing wrong with that, I don't understand why she's getting such a hard time, if this is the attitude of existing governors no wonder some schools find it difficult to fill their governing bodies

I don't understand why she's getting such a hard time, if this is the attitude of existing governors no wonder some schools find it difficult to fill their governing bodies

I don't see that the OP getting a hard time on this thread.

Respectful challenge and disagreement is a fundamental part of the role.

GB members need to be able to ask questions and willing to have courageous and uncomfortable conversations with other members of the Board and SLT, not avoid them and seek information from anonymous and unproven sources.

Being a School Board member is increasingly viewed as a professional, pro-bono role; and while training should be provided in the specific sector, members should have a skill set that gives them the capacity to operate confidently within the environment.

Like other people I ask questions on mnet because it's usually very knowledgeable and helpful, especially when I'm feeling like my questions might be naive, and especially at weekends when other sources of advice are having some well deserved time off.

OP - you shouldn't need to ask anyone to find out that Board minutes must be publicly available - that is a basic fundamental of school governance which is available to read in all DfE and NGA guidance.
If you've not read them yet, I suggest you do so, immediately, in order to understand your legal obligations in the role you have taken on.

I’ve looked at the Whatdotyknow website and seen the Governor minutes for my DCs school. Very interesting! All seems to be available, and some had identifying information such as teacher’s name or salary blacked out.

And usually when someone claims vexatious complaint what they actually mean is "happy to write truths we want hidden. Going about it in a way we don't like because we've shut doors in their face"

Totally disagree with this! IME it means "person who sends in one FOI request per week simply to waste the time of office staff".